In
anticipation of the former Environmentalist Vice-President's
ascendancy to the throne of ultimate global power, the United
States Department of Energy had commissioned a Doomsday Book of
CO2 emissions for global, regional, and national CO2 emissions
from fossil-fuel burning, cement manufacture and gas flaring,
annually from 1751 to 1998, which is available
. While there are difference in some of the values reported here
and at other DOE
and EPA
web sites, the data, which are in an easily manipulated
spreadsheet format, can yield useful insights to the continuing
debate over the Kyoto Protocol and global warming.

The
Kyoto Protocol calls for industrialized nations to reduce their
CO2 emissions to levels that are 5.2% lower than those recorded for
1990. The selection of 1990 as the base line and the strong
support of this objective, on the part of Germany and other
Eastern European countries, is no accident, as the DOE CO2
emissions database clearly shows. When the CO2 emissions data for
all of Germany and its two cold-war East and West entities, which
existed from 1945 to 1990, are plotted and compared with a Western
European country such as the United Kingdom, it is glaringly
obvious that Germany can meet and, indeed, exceed all of its Kyoto
obligations by doingabsolutely
nothing. When the two Germanys were merged in 1991, the
newly reunited country inherited Soviet era manufacturing
facilities that generated levels of pollution extraordinary
by Western standards. By simply closing or upgrading these
legacies of the Cold War to Western norms, Germany was Kyoto
compliant by 1992, as the following graph shows.

As
a table for subsequent years, the deception is even more obvious:

German
CO2 Emissions

Year

CO2

Change

Per
Cap.

1990

267.616

0.000%

3.45

1991

242.959

-9.214%

3.04

1992

235.599

-11.964%

2.93

1993

231.106

-13.643%

2.86

1994

238.178

-11.000%

2.93

1995

226.551

-15.345%

2.77

1996

234.761

-12.277%

2.87

1997

227.558

-14.968%

2.77

1998

225.208

-15.847%

2.75

The
United Kingdom on the other hand can expect no such advantage:

UK
CO2 Emissions

Year

CO2

Change

Per
Cap.

1990

155.386

0.000%

2.68

1991

158.938

2.286%

2.73

1992

149.963

-3.490%

2.57

1993

149.179

-3.995%

2.55

1994

148.122

-4.675%

2.53

1995

147.769

-4.902%

2.52

1996

154.440

-0.609%

2.62

1997

147.094

-5.336%

2.49

1998

148.011

-4.746%

2.51

Most
egregious is the fact that in 1998, the Per Capita CO2 Emission
for the United Kingdom was 2.51 metric tons of carbon, while that
of Germany was 2.75. The people of the United Kingdom generate
9.6% lessCO2
per person than the Germans, but, to meet their Kyoto
goals, they must reduce their CO2 emissions
still further. Germany, on the other hand, had already met
their targets before Kyoto was even finalized. In addition to
the ephemeral prize of climate stability in our times, all
that the Great Leader can offer the British people is blood,
sweat, tears and cold houses. Meanwhile in Germany, the members of
the Green Party, who only recently morphed to that color from Red,
can bask in the warm glow of an environmental righteousness
predicated on 45 years of the most brutal subjugation of other
nations' economies.